I smile down at her. “What are we just gonna stand here forever, you in my arms, your dad holding a gun to my head? If he shoots me, he shoots me. Ain’t nothing I can do about that, Princess. At least I’ll know I did one thing right.”

She takes a deep, shaky breath. “I’d be dead if it weren’t for you.”

I nod, because it’s true. If Slayer hadn’t come at a deal, Prez would’ve eventually killed her, and he’d have tortured her some more first. “Promise me somethin’?”

“What?”

“Get on your feet and then get the hell outta here. Prez will come looking for you again. He’s not a guy who likes to lose. Take as much money as you can, and get the fuck away from this life, otherwise you’re gonna wind up filling a body bag way too young.”

Lauren is wrenched away from me then. She screams as the Italian carts her off toward the clubhouse, flailing and slapping at him despite her injuries.

“Daniel!” she screams, reaching out toward me as he struggles to get her inside. Without thinking I take a step forward, but I’m attacked from behind. My knees go out from under me and I’m shoved face-first into the ground. Some heavy motherfucker sits down on my back. I buck, trying to unseat him, but I’m whacked in the back of the head until I stop.

“Well, isn’t that fuckin’ touching? The Angel scum, in love with my daughter? Didn’t I warn you away from her once before?” Slayer asks, circling me like a predator circles prey. The biker using me for a chair shoves his gun against the back of my skull.

“Yeah, I did,” Slayer continues, and he motions for the guy on top of me to force me to stand. I’m dragged up by the hair and presented to Slayer. “At the rally, where she fuckin’ went missin’!” His red, blotchy face almost touches mine. He’s so close I can see the blood vessels snaking out from the corners of his eyes. He’s fucking high. His daughter’s been locked up, raped, beaten, treated like a fuckin’ animal over some shit that she shouldn’t even have to know about, and the arsehole’s gettin’ high as a fuckin’ kite instead of findin’ her? He makes me sick. He’s everything I hate about the life. And he’s more than likely exactly where I’ll end up, because this is what we are—this is what livin’ in the club gets you: bitterness, enemies, and a shit-tonne of bad blood.

Excerpt #2:

I pick up a cup of cold, stale, black coffee and chug it down. It tastes like shit, so I screw the cap off of a bottle of Jack and chase the black filth with the burn of amber. I set it back on the table while the familiar click of my gun being cocked echoes through my small room. I laugh. Fucking ballsy bitches make me hot.

“Hands in the air, and turn around. Slowly,” the woman says through a scratchy throat. I do as she asks, mostly because I want to keep my spine intact, but also partly because bitches with guns are fucking hot, and I’m hard as a rock just thinking about the way she’s gonna look with a pistol trained on me.

She’s been busy while I was out, rummaging through my drawers and finding a pair of loose tracksuit pants. They’re rolled at the waist, so much that it makes her look pregnant. That, combined with her crazy fuckin’ cat lady hair and the filth covering her body, makes her look like a homeless person.

I smile and clasp my hands behind my head. Her eyes rove over me, taking in my size. She’s checking me for the arsenal I so obviously have stashed away in my fucking worn, faded jeans. She’s not checking me out and dreaming about me taking her rough and hard on my fucking scratched-up dining table, but I still get a fucking boner out of having her eyes roam all over me.

“Pick up the keys, and open the door,” she commands.

“If you run, they’ll shoot you.”

“Pick up the fucking keys.”

I snatch up the keys and lob them at her, hard enough that she has to twist out of the way. She cries out as she does, proving to me that her ribs are definitely injured, maybe even cracked. I lunge at her. Shoving her back against the bed, I land on top of her, warding off her blows with one hand and squeezing her wrist with the other until she drops the gun on the floor.

“Get off me!” she screams.

“You’re not leaving this clubhouse,” I whisper in her ear as she struggles beneath me. “The best you can hope for is to play nice and I might decide to keep you as a house mouse. But if you piss me off, and if you pull on me with my own gun again, your life will be so much worse. You thought the dentist was fucked up? Baby, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve lived inside my fantasies for a day. So if I were you, I’d be really fuckin’ careful about how you play your next move.”

Excerpt #3:

I take a deep shuddering breath, close my eyes and stretch my hand towards him. His touch is gentle this time, far more gentle than I’d ever thought someone with so much uncontained violence to him could be.

“Spread your fingers,” he commands. I do, and he lifts the roll of tape, presses the edge to my skin and begins winding it over my knuckles. I close my eyes. The strident sound of it stretching out from the roll makes me want to flee. It makes me want to run as far from his touch—from any man’s touch—as I can possibly get.

The feel of the tape against my flesh, binding, holding, is so much worse. I tug on my hand, but he won’t let go. My heartrate skyrockets, and sweat beads erupt over my brow and upper lip. I’m in that room again, struggling, screaming, trying to fight them off, and failing.

Biker knows it, too. His dark eyes challenge, they dare me to run, but they also implore me to stay. It’s ironic that the only thing keeping me here, keeping me grounded, is the man who abducted me.

He holds my gaze. I don’t know exactly what is hidden in his dark blue one, but it suffocates the panic within me, douses it like water flooding flames. He bends his head to my hand. Taking the paper tape in his mouth, he rips it with his teeth.

I still. I soften. His gaze doesn’t leave mine, not even once. Not even when he starts in on my wrist, gently biting through each piece of tape before pressing it down with his rough hands. I’m mesmerised by his mouth, the piercing, and the soft, full lips. The light catches a silver chain around his neck, something I’ve never noticed before—but then I try not to make a habit of staring too closely at him. Not now, though. Now I watch every twitch, every blink, every intake of breath, and every inch that is swallowed up by his mouth moving closer to my flesh.

Blurb

When I was ten, my father indoctrinated me into the family.

A brotherhood who would fight, protect, and give their lives for one another. A club whose ties ran thicker than blood, murkier than the dirt and grime that tainted my soul. Stronger than the bonds that connected me to my own family.

A band of brothers, where loyalty was kept and paid in a currency of blood.

Carmen Jenner is a thirty-something, USA TODAY Best Selling Author, doctor, pilot and CIA agent. She's also a compulsive, flagrant prevaricator who gets to make things up for a living.

While Sugartown may not technically exist, Carmen grew up in a small Australian town just like it, and just like her characters, she always longed for something more. They didn't have an Elijah Cade, though.

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